Transcription Cost Calculator
Enter how many minutes of audio or video you transcribe per month and see the cheapest plan across Wisprs and the plans people compare it against. Every competitor figure is pulled directly from that vendor's own pricing page and dated below, not a guess.
A 60-minute podcast episode is 60 minutes. A 30-minute weekly meeting is 30 minutes/week (~130/month).
| Provider | Plan | Monthly price | Includes | Effective $/min |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otter.ai | Pro | $8.33(annual billing) | 1,200 min | $0.01 |
| Descript | Hobbyist | $16.00 | 600 min | $0.03 |
| Wisprs | Pro | $25.00 | 1,000 min | $0.03 |
| Rev | Essentials | $25.49(annual billing) | 5,000 min | $0.01 |
Wisprs Pro covers 240 min/month for $25.00
Sources
Otter.ai pricing — https://otter.ai/pricing (checked 2026-08-13)
Descript pricing — https://www.descript.com/pricing (checked 2026-08-13)
Rev pricing — https://www.rev.com/pricing (checked 2026-08-13)
Wisprs pricing — wisprs.co/pricing (live)
Estimates only. Competitor pricing changes without notice — verify on the vendor's own page before deciding. This tool compares list prices for the closest matching plan tier, not every feature each product offers.
How much does transcription cost in 2026?
Most providers now sell transcription as a monthly subscription with a fixed pool of minutes, not a flat per-minute rate. That makes “transcription costs $X” the wrong question — the real number depends on how many minutes you actually need each month, because every plan has a break point where the next tier up becomes cheaper per minute. A podcaster transcribing 4 hours a month and an agency transcribing 80 hours a month are effectively buying two different products, even on the same platform.
AI vs. human transcription pricing
AI transcription (Wisprs, Otter.ai, Descript, and Rev's AI tier) runs on a monthly-minutes model, usually $0.005–$0.03 effective per minute depending on plan size. Human transcription (Rev's pay-as-you-go human service, for example) is priced per minute directly and starts around $1.99/minute — roughly 70–400x the AI rate. Human transcription still wins on accuracy for heavy accents, cross-talk, or poor audio; AI wins on speed and cost for everything else. Most teams use AI as the default and human transcription only for the recordings AI struggles with.
What actually drives the price up
- Volume — every plan has a cliff where you either overpay for unused minutes or get throttled past the cap. The calculator above finds that cliff for your actual usage.
- Speaker labels / diarization — gated to higher tiers on most platforms, Wisprs included.
- Turnaround speed — priority/“turbo” processing queues typically add cost or require a higher tier.
- Seats — most team plans price per user per month, so a 5-person team pays 5x the listed price, not one flat fee.
For a deeper breakdown of where the cost actually comes from, see cost-effective transcription solutions and Otter.ai pricing explained.
Need more than the free tool?
Wisprs transcribes full-length audio and video, with speaker labels, summaries, and exports to SRT, VTT, DOCX, and Markdown.
Related free tools
Free Audio-to-Text Converter
Turn an interview or episode into text you can edit, search, and export.
Open tool →Transcript Quality Analyzer
Score a transcript 0 to 100 before you build anything on top of it.
Open tool →Video to Text Converter
Drop in an MP4 or a YouTube link and get a transcript you can publish.
Open tool →FAQ
How is transcription usually priced?
Most AI transcription tools sell monthly plans with a fixed pool of minutes included, then charge overage or force an upgrade past that pool. A few (like Rev) also offer pay-as-you-go per-minute pricing for human transcription, which costs far more per minute than any AI plan.
Where do these competitor numbers come from?
Directly from each vendor's own pricing page, not a review site or aggregator. Each row lists the exact URL and the date it was checked, since these plans and prices change without notice.
Why does the plan recommendation change with my minutes?
The calculator picks the cheapest plan on each platform that actually covers the minutes you entered — jumping to a bigger, pricier plan when your volume outgrows the smaller one, the same decision you would make manually.
Is this calculator exact?
It compares list prices for the closest matching plan tier, not every feature. Annual-billed rates are labeled. Use it to get in the right ballpark, then confirm on the vendor page before committing.
What if I need more minutes than any plan listed here covers?
Most providers, including Wisprs, offer custom or Enterprise pricing above their published tiers — the calculator flags this instead of guessing a number.